So Teitur has this song called Let’s Go Dancing. I figure he probably sat in a restaurant with his (troubled) lover and then came home and wrote it.
Our minds run in circles
Racing 'round the restaurant
Searching for what more to say
To say what we really want
I wish I wrote more songs like this one. Some time back, I stopped writing songs to deal with life. What the life of an artist is supposed to look like: the incredible pressure of chaos and pain and beauty creating diamond-like paintings/poems/songs, like that process underground. What the life of this artist looks like: diffused angry frustration simmering under a smothering blanket of sedatives, overeating, antidepressants and fatigue. Just get me to sleep so I can survive until tomorrow. For years, crafting my pain into a redemptive “thing of beauty” has looked unappealing and phony, not to mention difficult. Dumping my problems into a password-protected journal is easy. I sat in that restaurant once. I came home and wrote this:
Then we went out to eat last night and she was bitchy the whole time. I’m sick of it. All I ever do is apologize for anything I ever do wrong, and try to console her when she’s unhappy, which is most of the time.
March 8, 2004
Let's leave it like it is
And stop staring at these walls
Let's not go headlong to that distance
Where you can't come back at all
Have we already gone there? Is it too late to come back? Those walls. God knows we’ve lived there so long it feels like home. Even though I lived my journals, it still surprises me to read them.
She’s so fucking psycho sometimes. I feel like I can’t live with her anymore. All the time, I just want to get out. The happiest parts of my day are when she’s not around. Sex is pretty much always better without her. What does that mean? Making love to my wife is some kind of duty, or the thing I do when I’m being good. In general, she’s probably just kind of a lousy lover, but I guess you can learn.
October 20, 2005
She’s really not a lousy lover. I guess it’s not too big of a surprise that sex is better by yourself when you’re pissed off all the time. Talk about anger being a barrier to intimacy.
Lets go dancing
Waltz around the rumor mill
In your faded dress with the daffodils
Let's go dancing
Let time stand still
Sometimes I take off my seatbelt when I feel like I did tonight, driving home from our marriage counseling session. I don’t think they have a name for that feeling. It’s anger and restlessness, entitlement, a drive towards destruction and “risk-taking behavior.” I played this song on the way home. I cried, a lot. I want that – to turn everything down and just dance for a while, to the music in our heads. To let time stand still for me and her, without the noise of our past or the anxiety of our future.
Once your name was but a whisper
A simple wish upon my tongue
And staring at your shadow
Is like staring at the sun
Eventually I was sobbing. And I put back on my seatbelt, because I have something worth living for. Linsey, you are unspeakably beautiful. And the places in you that are darkest are simply those that cannot accept this beauty, cannot bear to own it and share it with me. It is my hope that you can forgive me for what I’ve quoted here from my old journals, and here’s why: I don’t think it’s possible to get a sense of how much I love you without knowing where I’ve been. Yes, I wrote those things. Yes, there are pages of that vitriol. I drowned in rage for years, and I threw every dysfunctional coping mechanism at it that I possible could. I tried to numb my passion for you, I pointed it at other women, I fought it off like some kind of animal. And I could never make it go away.
And in this dark, dark hour
You still illuminate a room
Oh God give us the power
Got to keep ourselves in tune
Could Heidi (our counselor) be right? Instead of being a couple about to fall apart, are we a a loving couple in the middle of a dark hour? Can my journals from 2008 be about when we got better?
Lets go dancing
Waltz around the rumor mill
In your faded dress with the daffodils
Let's go dancing
Let time stand sill
God give us the power.
Time, stand still.
Linsey, please dance with me.
Racing 'round the restaurant
Searching for what more to say
To say what we really want
I wish I wrote more songs like this one. Some time back, I stopped writing songs to deal with life. What the life of an artist is supposed to look like: the incredible pressure of chaos and pain and beauty creating diamond-like paintings/poems/songs, like that process underground. What the life of this artist looks like: diffused angry frustration simmering under a smothering blanket of sedatives, overeating, antidepressants and fatigue. Just get me to sleep so I can survive until tomorrow. For years, crafting my pain into a redemptive “thing of beauty” has looked unappealing and phony, not to mention difficult. Dumping my problems into a password-protected journal is easy. I sat in that restaurant once. I came home and wrote this:
Then we went out to eat last night and she was bitchy the whole time. I’m sick of it. All I ever do is apologize for anything I ever do wrong, and try to console her when she’s unhappy, which is most of the time.
March 8, 2004
Let's leave it like it is
And stop staring at these walls
Let's not go headlong to that distance
Where you can't come back at all
Have we already gone there? Is it too late to come back? Those walls. God knows we’ve lived there so long it feels like home. Even though I lived my journals, it still surprises me to read them.
She’s so fucking psycho sometimes. I feel like I can’t live with her anymore. All the time, I just want to get out. The happiest parts of my day are when she’s not around. Sex is pretty much always better without her. What does that mean? Making love to my wife is some kind of duty, or the thing I do when I’m being good. In general, she’s probably just kind of a lousy lover, but I guess you can learn.
October 20, 2005
She’s really not a lousy lover. I guess it’s not too big of a surprise that sex is better by yourself when you’re pissed off all the time. Talk about anger being a barrier to intimacy.
Lets go dancing
Waltz around the rumor mill
In your faded dress with the daffodils
Let's go dancing
Let time stand still
Sometimes I take off my seatbelt when I feel like I did tonight, driving home from our marriage counseling session. I don’t think they have a name for that feeling. It’s anger and restlessness, entitlement, a drive towards destruction and “risk-taking behavior.” I played this song on the way home. I cried, a lot. I want that – to turn everything down and just dance for a while, to the music in our heads. To let time stand still for me and her, without the noise of our past or the anxiety of our future.
Once your name was but a whisper
A simple wish upon my tongue
And staring at your shadow
Is like staring at the sun
Eventually I was sobbing. And I put back on my seatbelt, because I have something worth living for. Linsey, you are unspeakably beautiful. And the places in you that are darkest are simply those that cannot accept this beauty, cannot bear to own it and share it with me. It is my hope that you can forgive me for what I’ve quoted here from my old journals, and here’s why: I don’t think it’s possible to get a sense of how much I love you without knowing where I’ve been. Yes, I wrote those things. Yes, there are pages of that vitriol. I drowned in rage for years, and I threw every dysfunctional coping mechanism at it that I possible could. I tried to numb my passion for you, I pointed it at other women, I fought it off like some kind of animal. And I could never make it go away.
And in this dark, dark hour
You still illuminate a room
Oh God give us the power
Got to keep ourselves in tune
Could Heidi (our counselor) be right? Instead of being a couple about to fall apart, are we a a loving couple in the middle of a dark hour? Can my journals from 2008 be about when we got better?
Lets go dancing
Waltz around the rumor mill
In your faded dress with the daffodils
Let's go dancing
Let time stand sill
God give us the power.
Time, stand still.
Linsey, please dance with me.
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